How to be a SAP consultant

Hi,
I am Vivek .I have completed Masters in Information Technology and Mastrer in Business Administration,Now i want to become a SAP consultant so do i have to do SAP Course .
I am working for a MNC and i have experience in VB and JAVA
regards,

A consultant carries a very important responsibility on his
shoulders....especially when he has something to do with either an
implementation or a re-engineering activity of an existing implementation
to perform.

While the success or otherwise of a business operation can be determined
efficient strategic /management planning and efficient routine operations,
it is also imperative that a consultant ( or a team of consultants ) have a
lot to contribute to such success when it comes to transliterating business
requirements in SAP lingo . Usually the client may be an expert in
operations in his / her realm but SAP may be Greek and Latin to him / her.
It is the duty of the consultant(s) to live up to the trust placed in them
and help the client do well in terms of expressing his business through
SAP. In order to do so, the consultant needs to be an expert with lot of
domain skill, expertise and experience. The consultant has to be thorough
with business process activities, SAP functionality relating to such
business processes and an effective person in terms of communicative skills
as well. Moreover, the consultant needs to be good at time management and
be capable of working within the planned timelines so that he / she not
only sustains the interests of his / her clients business but also adds
value to it. A paper certification is good.......no doubt.......but that is
not all......A certification is a mere passport to authenticate the basic
SAP concepts the consultant has acquired. As I told before, a consultant
requires much more than a paper certification .

As Roy pointed out, it is expertise in business and SAP that matters more
than a scrap of paper.

There is a lot more to becoming an SAP consultant than the little
bit this poster has described. SAP consultants are experts in their
fields usually with years of domain experience. Paper qualifications
are of limited usefulness if you do not have the expertise.

Thanks Roy B for an honest answer. I think its important for people who want to become SAP Consultants to be told the truth.
A SAP consultant is not just a certified somebody but an expert in his/her module who has had several years experience gained from different implementations/work environments.
It is too naive to advise someone to become a SAP Consultant simply by logging onto some site or getting a paper qualification!

I think it is equally naive to tell that doing certification is just a
paper knowledge. I think it is also very important to understand that
certification help the bridge the gap between SAP knowledge and so called
much emphasized domain knowledge (though I agree it is required to some
extent) having domain knowledge is no magic wand that gives right to become
a very good SAP consultant.

Person with domain knowledge will have to do equal amount of hard work to
understand mapping the processes into SAP. And also he is not expected to
understand (for example: everything in say SAP procurement).

Person without domain knowledge but with good knowledge of SAP, can with
mentor-ship of person of domain knowledge/experience consultant will be
able to bridge the domain knowledge gap and learn the business processes.

I think to become good consultant you need zeal and passion. Having said
all that industry always prefer experience consultant(read between the
lines).

Its high time to review the sap course curriculum and raise the
standards of learning imparted suiting the market expectations. this
alone can reform the prevailing situations of jobseekers in this area.
even rocket science is easy if you have the right attitude to master the
skill. regards - Suresh

To answer your question more directly; though, you have to decide which skillset interests you most. MBA programs typically emphasize the business process aspect of the business world. On the other hand, you have a Masters in Information Technology and experience in programming.

If you choose to go the programming route, you'll probably need to go through the standard SAP programmer bootcamp, which involves learning ABAP. If you love JAVA, then there is a legitimate SAP Java sub-specialty, but the path to get there is not as clear because it hasn't existed as a sub-specialty for as long as ABAP. Please do read the Advice column. With an MBA, you can try to enter into SAP consulting directly, but unless your degree is from a top school, you may find that those doors are not yet open for you.

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